Serendipity, p.20
Serendipity, page 20
“That’s a superpower,” my mother said, raising a glass of water like a toast. “Be proud of your ass.”
I stretched out the muscles of my arms, pulling on one with the other.
Weight wasn’t everything. I knew that. Taller girls had a harder time as a flyer no matter how thin they were. The limb length that made almost any clothes look good on them was also limb length they had to manage on the way down from a stunt. The same height I was always envious of made their center of gravity higher, which made it harder to get a stunt up to full, harder to get it stable, harder to keep it in the air.
But I still had to work my poses—my scorpion had to get cleaner, and then I had to get my needle, and my bow and arrow—to prove I belonged on this team. I had to prove it wasn’t just anatomy that had gotten me here. Or the sudden absence of Wren Miller.
My mother opened the fridge. “You want grilled cheese?”
I finished my arm stretch. “You are the worst cheer mom in the world.”
“Sorry.” She put on a stern expression. “Do you want”—she thought for a few seconds—“celery and electrolyte water?”
I sighed. “Of course I want grilled cheese. My ass is gonna stay big. I might as well enjoy it.”
My mother handed me a glass and immediately knocked hers against it. “That’s the spirit.”
* * *
CRADLE CATCH
1. Noun—a planned way for your stunt group to stop you from hitting the ground.
2. Noun—an unplanned way to stop you from hitting the ground when something goes wrong.
I wanted to hate Darcy and Cassidy, or Emmie and Zoe, or Camila, for me being off point stunt group. But I hadn’t realized what it could feel like to fly without having to fight your teammates to stay up. Camila called Leah and Morgan through the stunts, and they stayed in rhythm. Their arms were straight, locked. They fixed their grips, their hands holding all of my shoes, not just the toes and heels. They synced up, throwing on time. And when our stunt wobbled, they didn’t step out. They pulled together.
With that secure of a base under me, I could focus more on my shapes, on twisting, turning, on giving the kind of big smile the captains always wanted. I could tune into the space between control and letting everything go. I moved like I was flying, not falling, even though half of flying was falling like you meant it.
I spun out of my arabesque, kick double twist this time. I fell. They caught me, absorbing the impact of me in the same moment I engaged everything in my body.
“Good,” Camila yelled.
One more bounce, and I jumped onto my feet.
Camila looked at Leah and Morgan. “Nice work. You’re talking to each other.”
When Camila smiled, the sun caught the glitter on her cheekbone. Glitter. She wore glitter to practice. Of course she did.
Emmie called us into pairs, and my heart sped up.
Whatever I felt around Camila, I could tune it out when we were in groups. It was some stupid kind-of-celebrity crush, as shallow as the gold coating on my earrings, and I knew it. But when it was just me and her, it flared through my chest.
“Chairs, everyone,” Zoe announced.
Camila groaned.
I whipped my head around. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing personal,” Camila said. “This one’s just not my favorite.”
Even though I held myself back from saying Huh? I’m sure my face said it. Camila had gotten me up in a stunt where it was just her hands under my feet. Compared to that, a chair was nothing.
But then when Camila got me up, she couldn’t keep me there. Her hand kept shifting, trying to grab my thigh instead of settling where it belonged, between my legs, the awkward but inevitable placement for a chair.
“You’ve got to stop moving your hand,” I said.
“I’m trying,” Camila said, sounding more hesitant than I’d ever heard her, on her channel or in real life.
She shifted again, trying to get a grip on my upper thigh.
I fell out of it, too fast and too hard for her to bring me forward.
By instinct, I folded my body, pulled my legs together, straightened my knees, tensed my core, formed my body into a wide V.
Camila caught me, one arm under my back, one under my thighs.
“Sorry,” she said, breathing hard.
I couldn’t tell if my body was slick with sweat and sunblock or if her hands were damp, but she dug her fingers into me to stop my slipping.
She held on to me, my pulse hard in my neck and my fingertips.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding to signal she could put me down.
Even when she did, I was still close enough to smell her body splash.
Catching my breath was the only thing that stopped me from asking, What was that? Cheer involved getting used to having your teammates grab your ass and breasts. It happened if you were a flyer, and your bases were trying to save you. It happened if you were a base, and your flyer or your fellow bases were scrambling. Cheer meant getting used to either having your hand under a girl’s concha (if you were a base) or having a girl’s hand under yours (if you were a flyer).
For Camila, the hesitation made no sense. Losing her center of gravity on a chair after the kind of tumbling and basing she did was like perfecting a chocolate soufflé and then panicking when it’s time to make Pop-Tarts.
“Problem, Sanchez?” Darcy asked on the way by.
“Isn’t that your favorite?” Cassidy asked. “Putting your hand in a girl’s crotch?”
The fluttering through my body fell away. Rage floated up in its place.
Camila’s eyes wavered on me, nervous, just a second, and then flew over to Cassidy and Darcy.
“Tell you what,” she told them. She grabbed her water bottle off the ground, taking a long drink before continuing. “You two learn to do a layout with a full twist, and then go fuck yourselves, and then maybe you can talk to me again.”
I couldn’t tell what offended them more, her flicking her ponytail as she passed them, or the way she casually, right before leaving the field, did the full twisting layout she knew neither of them could.
* * *
PRETTY GIRL
1. Noun—a basket-toss pose that calls for a big smile more than maybe any other move in cheerleading.
2. Noun—a pose that makes you feel ridiculous but looks good from a distance.
3. Noun—a pose that requires you to commit completely.
There was a reason I stopped watching Camila Sanchez’s makeup tutorials. And it started with the first time I tried out for the high school squad.
I didn’t realize until I walked onto that field that it didn’t matter if I had the form, the strength, the flexibility, the bizarrely open hip turnout. It didn’t even matter if I’d shown up with the perfect glowy no-makeup makeup.
The older girls weren’t heavy with muscle like the best tumblers on my junior high team, their middles thick with the power and strength of their abs. The girls ruling this squad were willowy and small-waisted, even the bases. Most were blond and most who weren’t had identical honey-gold highlights. The two girls of color I could place who were already on the team had perfectly straightened hair, straighter than I ever managed to get mine.
The girls of color who weren’t on the team yet had the same kinds of ponytails I did, slicked back against our heads with hair spray or gel, the tails wavy or curly, a look that I’d always thought was cute but that I now realized did not fit on this team.
The other girls knew it too. They looked as uncomfortable as I did. We didn’t have the skinny ponytails, either naturally straight or meticulously straightened. We were all wearing clean, wrinkle-free clothes that made us look painfully earnest alongside the older girls’ pajama shorts and cut-up T-shirts.
Any makeup the older girls were wearing was a messy afterthought. A swipe of highlighter but no blush. Or the worn-off color of lip gloss applied hours ago. They didn’t care. They didn’t have to. The point was showing that they didn’t have to.
I was the definition of trying too hard. And yet, in my makeup that brought out my Latina features in all the wrong ways, I also hadn’t tried hard enough.
I should have underlined my lips.
I should have gone for a lighter shade of powder, exactly like Camila Sanchez told us not to do. (That white girl helping you pick a foundation may mean well, but she’s probably gonna steer you too pale. It’s not her fault. It’s the white beauty industrial complex.)
I shouldn’t have tried to be the shiniest, perkiest version of myself.
I should have tried to be paler, more casual and haphazard.
I should have tried to be just about anyone else.
* * *
That night, after practice, for the first time in a year, I went back to Camila Sanchez’s channel. And in with her tutorials about contouring and eyebrow shaping were a couple of posts of her talking to the camera about thinking she might be queer. Then being pretty sure she might be queer. Then claiming the word lesbian, followed by a tutorial using the colors of the lesbian flag.
Everyone wanted to seem real online. But something about Camila was past real and into raw. When she cried, she didn’t flap her hands at her face to stop her makeup from running. Her makeup bled. Her mascara ran. She was beautiful in a way that her makeup going ugly didn’t lessen. When she did her lesbian flag tutorial, she had to stop and start over when she got teary and messed it up, and she joked about it. She laughed loud and without apology.
I hadn’t claimed any particular label, at least no label more specific than thinking maybe I was queer. But her claiming her label, the nervous but unhesitating way she looked into the camera and said “I’m a lesbian,” that was more beautiful than the most flawless smoky eye.
“Ximena?” My mother squinted into my room, glowing from screen light. “You sleeping anytime soon?”
“Yeah,” I said. “In a minute.”
I watched them all. The tutorials where she turned her eyelids into pride flags. The video where she tried out a blush palette while talking about coming out to her mom. The post where she showed the look she wore to cheer at games at her old school, an update on her makeup routine that looked like she wasn’t wearing makeup.
Whatever bubbly feeling came back, the one I used to have watching her videos, it now came with the shimmery feeling of her holding me, and a bitter sense of the distance between us.
Camila was everything I had to undo about myself so I could be the kind of girl who belonged on the high school squad. The kind of girl who belonged at all.
But apparently, she belonged. With the muscles that made her an unshakable base, and the full-out eyeliner she wore even to practice, Camila belonged.
Apparently, it was just me who didn’t.
I always thought the problem was that I was a brown girl with curves who liked makeup.
But the problem was that I was the wrong kind.
Camila was stunning and brazen, and she had the skill and strength to back it up.
I wasn’t good for much of anything except getting thrown around.
* * *
NEEDLE
1. Noun—what you work your body toward after the scorpion.
2. Noun—the approximate width of the leeway you get as a girl of color.
I was still on the practice field as the sun was going down, trying to get my needle. But I was wobbling in it. If I’d been up in a stunt, I’d have already fallen.
“You still here?” Camila asked. She had her bag on her shoulder, like she’d just come back for something she’d forgotten.
I pretended I was too absorbed in straightening my leg behind me to answer.
“You don’t have to work so hard, you know,” Camila said.
That made me drop my leg. “Because you tumble like you do after not working hard?” I asked.
“I didn’t mean cheer,” she said. “You have to work hard in cheer. I meant”—she gestured at my face and body—“what you’re doing. To look like them.” She glanced over her shoulder like the team was still there.
I tried balancing my weight again to prep, and tried not to laugh.
On me, wearing lipstick when I was just gonna sweat during practice made me look like I was trying too hard. On Camila Sanchez, sweat added more glisten to her glitter.
On me, my high, hard cheekbones looked harsh, the very reason I softened the angles of my face with contour and highlight. On her, high cheekbones were fashion.
On me, my big ass made my cheer skirt ride up so much in the back that some of the white girls side-eyed me like I was committing an obscene act. I wanted to say, I don’t know what to tell you, these are the skirts, and this is my ass.
But on Camila Sanchez, her ass was another perfect contour on her body, the natural continuation of the muscles in her thighs. The width of her hips and the exaggerated bow of each calf were the perfect balance of curvy and solid. She was a base no one could move.
I grabbed behind me for my shin.
“You’re not breathing,” Camila said.
I tried to breathe, but not show I was thinking about breathing.
I fell off balance again.
“Tell you what.” Camila adjusted the strap of her bag. “You let me give you a makeover before the first game of the season, I’ll help you get your needle.”
My heart skipped like it was stumbling. Once, I would have thought I was the luckiest girl who ever picked up a blush brush.
But now Camila wasn’t just a face and voice on a screen. She was a reminder that she and I were very different kinds of queer brown cheerleader.
If Darcy and Cassidy knew I liked girls, if I’d had a label I was ready to declare, they’d have made comments about how much I liked being in a chair lift too. If they knew the fizzy feeling I got whenever Camila’s hands were on my waist, if they knew how the sweat on her skin looked, to me, like a million tiny crystals, they’d get in any hits they could when Zoe and Emmie were out of earshot.
Whatever they said to Camila, they’d do worse with me. I wasn’t grounded and steady like she was. I’d gotten used to yielding, to getting thrown around. As a flyer, that was my job, to go where other people’s hands sent me.
“I don’t need help.” I prepped again. “I almost have my needle anyway.”
“And I’ll help you get your bow and arrow,” Camila said.
I stopped, and squinted to make her out against the orange light.
“Before first game,” she said.
I thought of that girl on the screen who talked me through metallic eyeliner, who looked beautiful in mascara streaks as she said the word lesbian like it was the most powerful spell in the world.
I thought of her turning me into a comet, a firework, my heart bursting open in the air.
If I kept worrying about what the Darcys and Cassidys on the squad thought of me, I’d lose that spark, that light.
Whatever I’d kept of that spark gave me an idea.
“Only if you let me help you with something,” I said.
“What?” Camila asked.
I gave her a look.
Her eyes widened. “No.”
* * *
CHAIR
1. Noun—possibly the most dreaded lift for a cheerleader who likes other girls.
“I fucking hate this,” Camila said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I’m a lesbian cheerleader, and because queerphobic people exist, and because that makes me a little hesitant to put a hand in a girl’s crotch even when she gives enthusiastic consent,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, “this is beyond enthusiastic consent. I don’t want you to drop me.”
“I am a lesbian cheerleader,” she said again, slowly, “putting my hand in a girl’s crotch.”
“And it’s cheerleading,” I said. “Backspots push on my ass constantly to get me into the air. I’ve gotten my boobs grabbed to stop me from hitting the gym floor, and I’ve said thank you.”
“But do you get how I feel like the jokes are inevitable?” she asked.
“And when you’re cocaptain, queerphobic jokes will get fifty push-ups.”
“I’m not gonna be cocaptain,” Camila said. “There are gonna be five of us going after it.”
“Four,” I said. “I don’t want it. And you’ll get it, trust me.” I got closer to her. “Now quit stalling. If you haven’t gotten my shorts deeper into my ass crack, you have failed.”
“I know, I know.” She sighed. “Let’s get this over with.” We bent down and then she shoved me up. I propped one knee, but she was still moving her hand.
“Okay, no,” I said. “Actually under my crotch.”
“Are you sure—”
“Crotch, Sanchez!” I yelled down at her.
Maybe it was that she’d never heard me yell. Maybe it was that the first thing she was ever hearing me yell was the word crotch. But she shifted the heel of her hand, and I stopped wobbling.
“See?” I asked, locking my arm pose. “Aren’t I easier to keep in the air?”
She brought me down, hands on my waist. One misstep, and I fell back onto her.
She caught me, wrapping her arms around my rib cage.
“Sorry,” I said. If it had happened during a routine, we could have recovered without anyone noticing.
But I didn’t move.
And she didn’t move me. She didn’t let go. She didn’t bounce me back up to standing straight, the buoyant rhythm we were always following, like our bodies were balloons.
I looked back at her. Her mascara-ed eyelashes brushed my cheek. The glitter on her temples refracted through the sweat along her hairline, turning to crushed diamonds.
Technically, she caught my lips. But I made it easy, my raspberry lip balm meeting her lip stain that tasted like birthday cake.
Her fingers grazing my cheek felt as soft as a highlighting brush. They followed the curves of my cheekbone and browbone as she kissed me, like she was reminding me of all the best parts of my face.
